News I can watch before I start thinking crazy thoughts. You know, the kind of thoughts that will bring federal law enforcement to one’s door, if acted upon.

So I turned the news off. I’m back to watching The Russians at Church. There is beauty and reverence, plus magnificent choral music.

“But you told us already,” I hear you saying. And you are correct. But it bears repeating.

Some, maybe most of you, have the capacity to filter this fertilizer, but I don’t. So listening to the lovely meter of a Russian Orthodox homily, in a language I hardly understand, comforts me. The Russians. who lived in the fire of Communism for eighty years, find the frying pan of Putin, relatively comfortable.

So I’m going to chill.

Maybe some cartoons will be on the program tonight. Some reading, perhaps. Some beauty, balance, symmetry will be on the agenda. These are the things the arts, in the classical sense of the term, provide. I will consider Raphael and Michelangelo tonight, pass on Picasso and Chagall.

What I will be doing is repudiating the false promise of progress. Progress is the bait on the hook that we hit on. Who baits the hook is another question I will not explore tonight.